How much wood would a woodpecker peck if a woodpecker would peck wood…

Our front entrance used to be very plain (read: minimalistic). Over the past few years the Scandinavian style, with different types of wood being a focal point, has been growing on me. No more crackled patina paint jobs ala shabby chick for me! Soooooo, we decided to bring some of the Norwegian forest to our front door.

Measure the height of of the area where the trees are to be put. In our case it was 2,4 meters from ground to ceiling.

Get a saw or call your local lumberjack. Remember to check with your local landowner before you start chopping down the wood and brining it home! We went for birch-trees, as these are plentiful and the bark is beautiful. The trees we selected had a circumference of 20-26 centimeters

Board on the ground for fastening the trees

Fasten with screws in the ceiling

After collecting the trees, place an impregnated board of wood on the ground. (We did not need to fasten this to the ground.) Measure the height from the board to the ceiling. Fasten the bottom of the trunks to the board with stainless screws and the top to the ceiling. If you don’t have a ceiling, you will probably have to fasten the top of the trees to the wall with a spacer of some sort.

The trees with some more details

We put some pine branches around the base of the trees for decoration, this is easy to alter according to time of year or occasion. We hung up a battery-powered LED string light for an extra cozy feeling. 🙂

You can also save some branches (or put in your own pegs by drilling holes and securing with glue) for hanging up the kids’ rain clothes when you don’t want them inside. Just a practical tip! 😀

The wonderful things you can find on the Internet! I am found of paper craft and found this really cool shop assembli.nl online. They have lots of different origami-type paper sculptures that you can fold and glue together. I decided to try it out and ordered The Fox!

The sculpture came really nicely packaged in a sturdy cardboard box. Inside were three large rolled up sheets of thick paper, a wooden ruler for making nice, sharp edges and a tube with a generous amount of glue.

Cut along the lines, score and fold.

The glue is applied to all the tabs

About to be glued together

It looks like chaos

Not too shabby from the outside

Last piece of the puzzle

It took about five hours to put it together, a couple of evenings of entertainment in other words. 🙂

The finished fox finally on the wall! It looks a bit like a 3D-modell from a computer game. 😉 The finished modell is 48x26x38 cm. In other words, large enough to be used instead of the creepy, old fox-trophy that you inherieted from your uncle Bucknuckle!

We hung the trophy here in the teenagers room. Nano seems a bit skeptical about the whole trophy-thing. 😉 But she can relax, we’re going for the bear next time, over the coach in the living-room.

This weekend we celebrated a birthday at our home. The birthday girl had her heart set on churros, after pining for them since last vacation in Spain. Nothing else to do but find out how to make them home made style! 🙂 They are easy to make, and very tasty if I do say so myself! Even the birthday girl gave them a thumbs up!

You will need around 2l of cooking oil for frying. We used sunflower-oil.

Ingredients for the dough:

2.5 dl of water

110 grams margarine

125 grams all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 eggs

Ingredients for the sprinkle mixture:

50 grams sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pour the oil into your deep-fryer, or a large pot. The oil should be 3-4 cm deep.Heat the oil to 180 degrees Celsius.

In a medium saucepan, heat water and margarine to a rolling boil. Combine the flour and salt; stir into the boiling mixture. Reduce heat to low and stir vigorously until the mixture forms a ball, about 1 minute. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs one at a time. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip.

Carefully squeeze out about 10 cm long strips of dough directly into the hot oil. Cut with a knife when you reach your preferred length. Having a third hand available here can help. 😉

Fry 3 or 4 strips at once, until golden brown, about 2 minutes on each side. Remove from hot oil to drain on paper towels.

Put the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and stir together. Roll the churros in the mixture while still hot.

Style them up for the table. We used paper boxes from Søstrene Grene, but they look great wrapped in brown paper with a bowl of chocolate saus on the side for dipping.